OBSERVATIONS ON VEGETABLES. 359 



FAIRY RINGS. 



The cause, occasion, call it what you will, of fairy rings 

 subsists in the turf, and is conveyable with it :* for the 

 turf of my garden-walks, brought from the down above, 

 abounds with those appearances, which vary their shape, 

 and shift situation continually, discovering themselves now 

 in circles, now in segments, and sometimes in irregular 

 patches and spots. Wherever they obtain, puff-balls 

 abound ; the seeds of which were doubtless brought in the 

 turf. — White. 



YEW. 



In the churchyard of this village is a yew-tree, whose 

 aspect bespeaks it to be of a great age : it seems to have 

 seen several centuries, and is probably coeval with the 

 church, and therefore may be deemed an antiquity : the 

 body is squat, short, and thick, and measures twenty-three 

 feet in the girth, supporting a head of suitable extent to its 

 bulk. This is a male tree, which in the spring sheds clouds 

 of dust, and fills the atmosphere around with its farina. 



As far as we have been able to observe, the males of this 

 species become much larger than the females ; and it has so 

 fallen out that most of the yew-trees in the churchyards of 

 this neighbourhood are males : but this must have been 

 matter of mere accident, since men, when they first planted 

 yews, little dreamed that there were sexes in trees. 



In a yard, in the midst of the street, till very lately grew 

 a middle-sized female tree of the same species, which 

 commonly bore great crops of berries. By the high winds 

 usually prevailing about the autumnal equinox these 



* Fairy rings are caused by certain fungi which throw their seeds 

 outwards, so that a gradually increasing circle is formed of greener 

 and brighter vegetation. 



